Operation Laser Kiwi: help us take New Zealand-made energy on the road
Winter cold snaps led to the country hitting record electricity usage multiple times at the start of this month with eight of the 10 highest demand periods in history reached in the first two weeks of August. It's driven calls to speed up consumers' ability to feed back into the grid via their electric vehicles. And to pay households for cutting electricity use at peak times. Bruce Fowler from NordEast and Margaret Cooney from Octopus talk to Kathryn Ryan.
Retailer Octopus offered its customers cash for every kilowatt-hour they saved, during some of the biggest peaks this month.
A current barrier to getting EVs involved is the carmaker's warranty, which restricts two-way usage of the battery.
One of the country's major EV importers and distributors, NordEast, a subsidiary of the Giltrap Group, is underwriting the warranties for cars in a trial in Queenstown, being run by EECA.
Kathryn speaks to Bruce Fowler from NordEast and Margaret Cooney from Octopus.
Australia reaches a milestone in August, with more new electric cars sold than petrol cars; another new study shows EV batteries last longer than the myths have made out; Heart Aerospace sends the world's heaviest electric plane skywards; China's massive mining machine hits the dirt; and we've fully embraced heat pumps to warm the air, now they're coming for our water.
Read moreDownloadNew Zealand spends about as much on petrol and diesel as it earns exporting concentrated milk. Mike Casey says that money leaves the country, and most of it does not have to. He runs a cherry orchard in Central Otago on 21 electric machines, and a $50,000 diesel bill became a $25,000 revenue stream before financing costs. What I Asked Mike👉 How much money does New Zealand lose every year buying fuel from offshore?👉 What did it actually cost to electrify 21 machines?👉 What is the real payback period, machine by machine?👉 What can you do if you lease your building and cannot touch the roof?👉 Who should not do this?
Read moreDownloadA pinch and a punch (and a big bunch of new EVs) for the first of the month. The Rewiring gang is always pretty jazzed about the release of the new car sales numbers each month and, while the short-term stats tend to bounce around a bit, the long-term trend is clear: sales of new EVs are up by 150% year to date and sales of new petrol vehicles are down by 15% in the same period.
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